1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of inspection systems and, in particular, to a system for scanning boats and other small sea-going vessels.
2. Description of the Related Art
All countries desire to control who or what items cross their borders. Governments consider border control necessary for economic, political, and security reasons. Economic reasons may include payment of customs duties and other tariffs. Political concerns may include immigration and other national policy issues. Security concerns may include drugs and weapons trafficking. However, smugglers have presented problems for border control for centuries.
International trade plays a major role in the national economy of almost every country in the world. The magnitude and growth of the import and export trade is a good measure of the strength of an economy. International trade facilitates countries to achieve optimum levels of economic growth by allowing export of surplus domestic production while providing the means to import goods, which is often considered essential to achieving a high level of living standard for the population.
Maintaining an effective control over the goods entering through the various ports of entry has long been a major challenge for the customs officials. The presence of such a control not only allows correct collection of customs duties and other governmental revenues, but also limits smuggling of contraband items such as arms, explosives and drugs. Moreover, large volumes of imported goods generally make it impossible for customs officials to maintain a program of full inspection with 100% coverage by using the traditional methods of physical inspection.
Customs agencies have installed stringent controls backed by sophisticated inspection devices at airports and land border crossings. However, smuggling by sea remains a significant problem for customs agencies.
Customs agencies have recognized this need and have endeavored to equip themselves with inspection technologies that provide high degree of automation in the customs inspection process. Among such technologies are cargo X-ray systems, which would provide a fast, efficient, safe and cost-effective method of inspecting large volumes of containerized cargo. However, these systems have heretofore been unavailable for inspecting sailing vessels.
Cargo X-ray systems are an invaluable tool to uncover banned goods and items such as weapons, ammunition, explosives, drugs and many others. By utilizing state of the art imaging and image processing technologies, customs inspectors can easily identify smuggled goods even if hidden in dense cargo or concealed compartments.
In many areas of the world, a substantial proportion of trade uses small boats (known in some areas as “dhows”) for cargo transport. These vessels have traditionally been used to transport all types of goods including grain, spices, fruits, vegetables, handcrafts, and other merchandise.
The vast majority of these vessels are owned and operated by individuals who sometimes fall into the alluring trap of making quick financial gains by smuggling contraband. Such contraband may take different forms including manifest fraud, drugs, illegal immigrants and sometimes weapons or explosives.
Shipwrights typically build dhows to order, with no standard design. Such custom designs give rise to the opportunity for creating hidden or concealed compartments in the design, particularly in hard to reach areas. Although these compartments may have legitimate uses, smugglers may also use these compartments for smuggling contraband. Experienced customs inspectors may know the likely places for hiding contraband, but due to the large variation in design, customs inspectors may not locate all the hidden compartments and thus cannot guarantee 100% inspection. In addition, inspectors may have to offload the cargo to carry out inspection of the cargo. This is time consuming and has the potential of damaging the cargo.
Despite such problems with manual inspection of vessels, to Applicant's best knowledge, a sailing vessel scanning system has never been designed and put into commercial use anywhere in the world